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If you run an SEO agency and want to survive, you need to sell results.
Not keyword rankings, not content, not links. You need to focus on leads or revenue generated.
Organic rankings and traffic don’t move the needle anymore. The market is tired of SEO agencies who over promise and under deliver.
You need to deliver tangible business results if you want to grow in 2025 and beyond.
That’s what our blended search model is about — putting your clients in position to generate real revenue from the SERPs, not just fluff deliverables.
This post is going to break down how your agency can adopt a “blended search” approach that will guarantee business results for your clients.
Ready to stop selling fluff? Let’s get into it.
Why move from SEO to a Blended Search service?
An SEO sales pitch typically focuses on “ranking high on Google” as the outcome of the service. This was a solid pitch back when organic listings were above the fold and delivered loads of clicks and conversions to businesses.
The thing is, that’s no longer the case.
Google’s “10 blue links” are no longer the norm. With ads, rich results, and AI answers, Google is giving away prime real estate, which was once the holy grail of SEO.
On some searches, users need to scroll past three full screens of results before they hit the first organic listings:
Even then, clients aren’t always able to achieve the top organic results.
Our agency (WEBRIS) specializes in working with law firms – most of the SERP results are littered with directory sites like Avvo and Findlaw. Ranking in the organic listings simply is not a good strategy anymore.
If you’re only doing traditional SEO, you’re missing out on opportunities to drive real business results.
Your agency grows at the speed of your client’s growth.
If you’re struggling to grow your SEO agency, it means you’re not improving your client’s businesses fast enough. The blended search model will help solve this problem.
Blended Search delivers faster, sustainable growth from Google
To be clear, the blended search model is not about ditching SEO altogether. SEO delivers far greater results in the long term for many businesses.
For example, it would cost Rosenbaum & Rosenbaum over $1 million per month in paid ads to achieve the level of visibility they get from SEO:
But SEO also has some shortcomings.
- It can take a long time to get going for a business
- It can be difficult for business owners to understand
- It’s a hard service to sell the value of
- It’s not as easy to predict results compared to paid ads
By including paid ads in your service offering, you’ll overcome SEO’s shortcomings while maintaining its benefits. It will become a symbiotic relationship that grows over time.
Paid ads will deliver traffic and leads very quickly and consistently. Over time, the growth rate will taper off because there are only so many keywords that it makes sense to bid on.
SEO doesn’t have these limitations. You can rank for as many keywords as people search for (if you optimize your content correctly).
Generally, we see the cross-over point when SEO results are greater than paid results around months 8-10. Sometimes sooner, sometimes later, depending on how competitive the industry is.
How to integrate PPC Ads into your SEO offer
If you’re going to expand into other services, adding paid search ads to your product offering is far easier than doing things like web design or digital PR.
There’s a lot of overlap with your SEO processes and it’s an easier service to sell to clients. Here are the steps Webris took when we pivoted our offer.
1. Target your offer to a single niche
We specialize in working with law firms. DUI, accident, and injury law are all very competitive spaces. It’s getting more expensive to generate leads for these types of businesses.
We can generate great results at far lower costs for our clients because we took the time to understand what works in this niche.
For instance, competitive keywords in this space are things like “dui attorney near me”. You’re likely going to see the following elements above organic listings for these:
It’ll be different in other industries. For instance, if you’re targeting ecommerce, Google Shopping and Merchant Centre results will likely dominate the top of search results.
Take the time to learn what features Google is placing above the fold in your industry. Then double down on showing up in those features.
2. Productize your offer
Selling “SEO plus paid ads” is not a productized offer. You need to get more granular than this.
For instance, we sell four main things to the lawyers we work with:
- Local Ads
- Pay-per-click Google Ads
- Local SEO
- SEO Content
Each of these is designed to gain visibility in a very specific feature on Google’s search results based on what we identified has the most impact in this niche.
Local Service Ads
In many competitive local niches, the first thing you’re likely to see in search results are Local Service Ads. They look like this:
You’ll see the reviews and business details of each local business. This information is pulled from the business’ Google Business listing. Without a Google Business profile, you can’t run Local Ads.
Unlike regular Google Ads (more on these in a moment), you’ll pay per lead generated. This is great because the ads are optimized to deliver phone calls to your clients. No calls means no money spent.
Most of the time, these ads are also far less competitive since fewer businesses have verified profiles in an area. However, although they’re less competitive, these ads aren’t predictable. You’ll never know how well they work for a client until you try them out.
Google Ads
Google’s pay-per-click ads are what most people think of when we talk about paid search ads. They look like this:
These ads are managed separately from Local Ads. Google Ads is a separate product in the Google Suite and there are a few key differences between these and Local Ads:
- You don’t need a Google Business profile to run these
- You’ll be able to link to any page on your website instead
- You’ll pay for each click to your website (not per lead generated)
- You’ll be able to show up for more keywords, more reliably
These ads are an excellent option for clients who want to test out new markets.
For example, say you’ve got a lawyer who works in Miami and is thinking about moving into Boca. They don’t need to have a verified location in Boca to run some pay-per-click ads to test out performance.
The downside, however, is that there’s far greater competition, which can drive up the cost of these ads, especially in industries like personal injury law.
Local SEO
Underneath all the ads, the next thing that Google shows in most local search results is a map pack. It looks like this:
We find that about 50% of our clients’ leads come from the maps pack, which is why we don’t dismiss the power of SEO in favor of ads. Ranking here is actually the main goal for most of our clients.
Like with Local Ads, there’s far less competition here, and it’s a better placement than a typical organic listing for location keywords. Searchers and Google both love this placement, which is why it tends to drive most of the results.
But ranking here takes time.
Most clients won’t be willing to pay four or five figures a month for nothing. You need to impact them quickly, which is why we blend our Local SEO services with Local Ads for the best short- and long-term results.
SEO content
Our final strategy is SEO content designed to rank in regular organic listings. These are the “10 blue links” results and look like this:
If you’re like most SEO agency owners, you’re likely selling rankings for these listings to your clients. In our experience, these deliver the lowest level of results for clients in competitive industries because Google has pushed them so far down the page.
But that’s not always the case. For keywords that don’t make sense to bid on with paid ads, these organic listings are where you’ll drive results from.
The key is being strategic with it and targeting different strategies to different marketing funnel stages.
3. Implement a full-funnel search strategy
If we look at search marketing holistically, it’s broken down by keywords. We know clients need to rank for certain keywords because they’ll make more money. For lawyers, it’s queries like:
- “Lawyer near me”
- “Hire DUI attorney”
- “Best DUI attorney” and so on.
But there are other types of keywords people look for before they’re ready to buy a product or service. Check out our agency’s keyword research process and template for all the details on how we find these opportunities.
Once you find the keywords you want to target for your client, then it’s about assigning the best strategy for maximizing visibility on those searches.
This is what we call vertical integration, of a full-funnel approach to search.
It allows you to target searchers cost-effectively, regardless of how near or far they are from a sale.
Frankly, the most viable keywords for clients are those at the bottom of the funnel leading to an action. In most cases, you’ll need to advertise on these to get visibility above the fold on a Google search.
This is where you need to adapt your strategy for each client. For instance, personal injury law is a very competitive space, especially for advertising, which can cost thousands of dollars per lead.
If you’re working with a firm that’s just starting out, chances are they don’t have that kind of budget to go all in with ads. So, you may focus on local SEO instead with a small budget dedicated to local service ads where they can capitalize on the lower competition levels.
If you’re working with a more established firm that has the budget, it’s likely going to be a lead volume game for them, where pay-per-click ads are a core element of the strategy. They’re also more likely to go all in on all the channels available if they have the budget.
Either way, it’s about understanding where your client is in their growth journey and how you can best spread their budget at each funnel stage.
Getting started with the blended search model
Adding paid ads to your product offering is much easier than you may think.
We started by hiring a contractor who has now become our Head of Paid Search. He’s delivering great results for clients, making it very easy for us to sell our marketing services to prospects.
We run everything through our Google PPC Projection template:
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It shows prospects black and white data, like the expected cost per conversion. They sign up for the service if they’re happy with the projected cost. It’s so much harder to get buy-in for SEO because it lacks this level of clarity.
